Chicago Marathon switches up registration service

Race organizers have decided to go with a new service for the Chicago Marathon signup after swarms of marathon participants crashed Active.com’s servers last year when registration opened.

Last year the demand for race bibs at the Chicago Marathon was so high that when registration opened the servers were unable to handle the traffic, causing confusion and mix ups for the race. Runners weren’t sure if they were registered, some were billed twice and others were unable to access the website at all.

Active is the largest race registration company.

Kimbia Racing came to the organizers aid when Active was down, stepping in to help offload the traffic. The marathon filled the remaining 15,000 bib numbers through the lottery system.

This year, Chicago has completely switched over to a lottery system, aside from automatic qualifying standards, charity runners and those who have run the event five or more times. They’ve hired Kimbia to do all the heavy lifting of the registration involved.

Kimbia Racing has hosted registration for the Ragnar Relay series, the Dallas Marathon and the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon. Different from the Active registration, Kimbia’s software will be embedded directly into the Chicago Marathon website.